CRACK CAPITALISM

clock-time, destruction of nature, and so on. Changing social
relations cannot be reduced to changing the ownership of the
means of production: it means a transformation of all aspects of
our lives. The complexity of domination seems to overwhelm us.
The only way out of this dilemma is to attack time itself.
The story that we have told so far is the orthodox tale of
primitive accumulation. The historic transition from feudalism
to capitalism created a new organisation of human activity as
abstract labour, and this brought with it a transformation of
time, of sexuality, of the person, of every aspect of life. This
is a past process that has created a society of identity, a onedimensional
society, a society ruled by the clock. The capitalist
forms of social relations will not necessarily exist for ever, but
for the moment they rule.
But supposing it is not so? Supposing the past is not the past
but also the present? Supposing primitive accumulation is not
just a past process but also a present one? That would open
the door to a very different politics and a very different theory.
Primitive accumulation is usually seen as a past process of
violent struggle to establish the social bases of capitalism. Marx
himself seems to have thought of it in that way, speaking of it as
'the pre-historic stage of capital' (186711965: 715; 1867/1990:
875) and suggesting that the initial violent establishment
of capitalist conditions gives way to the 'dull compulsion of
economic relations' and that now 'direct force ... is of course still
used, but only exceptionally' (186711965: 737; 1867/1990: 899).
And yet it cannot be so: there are certainly changes in the form
of accumulation, but it is surely wrong to suggest that at some
moment the direct violence of early accumulation is succeeded by
a new stage in which the 'dull compulsion of economic relations'
is sufficient to maintain capitalist order.!
At its core, primitive accumulation is the separation of
producers from the means of production. (Marx 1867/1965:
714; 186711990: 874-5) But this separation is not a closed
process. It is something that is repeated each and every day. On
the one hand, there is a constant struggle to extend the enclosure
of property: think of water, genetic resources, or intellectual
property, for example. Think of the massive and accelerating
expulsion of the peasantry from the land throughout the world
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